


the cold setting in

by riverbed



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Internal Dialogue, Lots of Thinking, Rape Recovery, Revenge, Sexual Assault
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-20
Packaged: 2018-05-18 12:10:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5927842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riverbed/pseuds/riverbed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the thing about building yourself a box to live in is that unless there is an extremely improbable bout of chance blowing your direction, the winds do not bode for getting out any more than they do for getting in.</p><p>or anna gets sad, goes numb, gets mad, then gets even. in many more words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. prologue - the enemy of my enemy is my friend

**Author's Note:**

> i got fed up with anna being the town whore. i want her story to do her justice, full to the brim and richly shaded.
> 
> this is my attempt at making that wish come true.
> 
> oh, i should mention: this is probably set mid-season 2. before that great scene in the woods at the end.

Anna knows that she is hardheaded. Stubborn, almost intransigent. She has been told these things all her life. It is a helpful trait. She compartmentalizes her heartache and molds it into the bricks which contribute to the walls around her. Each new slight, every failed friendship only dries itself in a thick new layer to reinforce the barriers. At this point the walls are so thick she can barely hear what happens outside them, let alone react fully to events which might affect a less stoic woman; she goes about her day-to-day tasks nearly numb to the comings and goings of the townspeople, sometimes even the activities of those she should be keeping a better eye on. 

When Mary suggests a charity, she is impressed. She admits to herself that she should meet Mary halfway, either in competition or in kindness, match her wits (which she has never been so blind as to underestimate, much unlike Abraham himself.) But the thing about building yourself a box to live in is that unless there is an extremely improbable bout of chance blowing your direction, the winds do not bode for getting out any more than they do for getting in.

Connection is definitely a warm front, anyway, and Anna sees the colors that shade her life in a more cold palette nowadays. 

She regards Mary and the other ladies with a tight smile and that night when she closes her eyes, she dreams of Abraham though she does not sleep for a long while. It is not the cursed dream which makes her cheeks flush; it is the more innocent one, a memory of the two of them playing outdoors, on the grounds of the very house she is now staying in, as children. She remembers she had caught him square on the face with a snowball just as his head had been tipped back to laugh, loud and open, and he had laughed even harder, choking on the pure white powder and shivering as it ran down his neck, melting to liquid ice.

Anna rarely allows herself the luxury of memory. It is all too painful, the thoughts of what might have been. She carries with her so many what ifs and can claim no closure. But in this house it is hard not to dwell on such things; ironically, she misses her marriage bed, half-empty in Selah’s continued absence. Richard seems intent on keeping her here, unorthodox as their current situation may be; he seems to understand that it is a war. He likely understands much more than that, if his piercing eyes mean anything. There are layers to his expectation of Anna, much like the contempt brewing just under his love for his remaining son; he suspects something, and perhaps he knows and perhaps he doesn’t, but just the same he will be adept at using it against her if the need arises.

Again Anna derides herself for letting her guard down even the slightest, even at a place she had once considered home, even around a person she had once considered family and maybe still does.

She also acknowledges that this is the safest place for each of them - her and Mary, absences of their husbands considered - to be. Advantageous, too, if she can manage to hone the skills she has picked up. Abraham may not think her valuable, but she has much to prove. She can be a machine meant for revolution if that is what will convince him -

No. That’s the problem, isn’t it? Always her life, her happiness has been dependent on somebody else’s preferences and whims. She believes in this revolution because she believes in it of her own accord, not to impress a man who isn’t even her suitor anymore. Anna lectures herself mentally for framing her every choice as if Abe will give a damn what she does. He doesn’t; he has proven as much time and time again. But there is the ever-so-often moment at one of their meeting places (she prefers the woods - the fresh air floods her lungs with a fresh memory to guiltily savor each time she goes out there) when, breathless after spilling news, they see something which is now only distantly familiar in each other, Anna is sure of it. She wishes she could identify it, often wishes she could grab his face with both hands and study it until all at once she is struck by clarity in recognition. She always holds herself back, fiddling with her pendant when the urge strikes.

Anyway, she had meant to use the flirtation with Hewlett to advance their cause, and had certainly not expected it to develop into an unexpected tenderness. She is unsure how somebody so dynamic and good ended up in command of a British faction - but there she goes taking Abe’s word as gospel, again. The boys she grew up with are now men, carving out places in their rapidly changing world, but they hold onto ideas and passions like children, completely unwilling to adapt, to see something from a perspective they might have missed, even when doing so will serve the original idea in the end. Situations arise and matters are tended to as they need to be. Women have always understood this, and women continue to ebb and flow, showing their softest sides, offering up their most protected flesh to be cut into, where men stand their ground, knees unbending, and take hit after hit where it matters most.

This is what she tells herself each time Hewlett’s hand brushes her arm and she shivers - that she is only adapting, going with the flow, and not that she is falling in love. After all, it has been so long since she has fallen in love; how would she know what it really felt like, anyway? The situation with Abraham is at a stalemate; she thinks they love each other, still, but their relationship has been chipped away at by so many years of frustration, a bitter poison leaking into the pure sweetness she supposes love is supposed to be. Selah was never a choice for love, not the sort that she grew up idealising; he was a practicality, the intelligence of their mothers aligning in a singular moment of brilliance.

Hewlett is… more than each of them. He is her enemy, or should be, a figurehead for an army who trashes her pub and seeks to oppress her friends. He is not special - she knows his story, and it is not an impressive one; rich family, rising up predictably quickly through the ranks due to his societal standing, the standard British officer’s fare. The American army is much more romantic, she thinks; men have stepped in and come from nothing, fighting their way tooth-and-nail up a ladder with missing rungs. The stakes are higher, the pay lower, the rations meager. They fight because they need it, not because of obligations to anything other than themselves, their families. That is how she knows she is on the right side of history. Nothing that comes easy is worth it, and the English have shown no signs of struggle. Their uniforms get torn, and they impose upon their landladies to sew them up, good as new. Their artillery gets stolen, and more artillery is sent to replace it. Nothing lost, nothing gained. Each time they break even.

No, Edmund Hewlett has not known a single rough patch, and would not be punished for idleness. Yet he still wants to learn, looks to the night sky and sees anything but darkness, remains engaged and interested in the world around him and the worlds beyond. There is an itch in him, the same sort that Anna can feel stir within herself, a real desire. He can tell the world is changing and wants to bear witness, and not only that, he wants to participate, make his contribution. He is not here because he has to be; or maybe he is, but he is here, he is present, making the best of this little unfamiliar town without excessive use of Anna’s pub or excessive sulking. He finds joy in times of misery. Anna finds herself intrigued.

And he is also John Simcoe’s enemy, and John Simcoe is vile, and if she compares the two… there is no point where they link, there is only fear and blackness where Simcoe’s tall figure is in her mind and hope and curiosity where Hewlett is concerned. The contrast is so stark that she may as well be trying to compare Abraham and his father, a violent, active rift between them, neither side conceding to back down, each looking to overtake the other. Balance, but precarious.

It has been so long since Anna has been curious.


	2. strange girl on her own beach

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rape tw.

There is pain and then there is what happens when the pain overwhelms and ices the blood, fogs the brain.

This is that second sort of singular experience, the kind of pain that slices open the lungs and sucks the air out of them if one doesn’t dissociate. Anna is but a fly on the wall to the war Simcoe is waging on her body, but worse is the potential devastation she recognizes in the way Simcoe has wormed his way into her mind. So she leaves, grants herself permission to fly away. As he breathes hard against her neck she imagines herself someplace tropical, perhaps the Caribbean, those islands she has heard so many lush stories of. She sees herself on a beach, alone, waves of a shocking, clear blue she has never seen lapping at her bare toes and quiet, utter quiet, finally peace. Nobody pesters the strange girl on her own beach.

John’s hands are freezing cold, a sensation she registers only distantly through the numbed gooseflesh on her skin. He has her chemise pushed up far enough to wrap his large hands around her hips and he digs his thumbs into the yielding flesh on her stomach, hoists her further up the wall, and she suddenly realizes how insubstantial she is. Normally she feels quite sturdy - after all, Setauket is a community of laborers, and she has never questioned her hard work, her ability to do her own heavy lifting. But Simcoe adjusts her as if she weighs nothing at all, and, as if her strong legs are completely inconsequential, she does not kick. By way of fighting, Anna only absently tries to make herself as heavy as possible, so as not to help his efforts to position her to his liking.

He doesn’t seem to mind - he continues rutting against her, hips working against her thigh. He crushes her against the wall with his own chest and as his pace quickens and falters in pattern she scrambles for the beach, that serene little corner of the world with brilliant colors she has never so much as seen. As far as she knows the world is in muted reds and greens and browns, dulled yellow leaves at the base of maples and the ever-undecided grey of the sky. Indigo, used for dying the Rebel uniforms, had fascinated her the first time she’d seen it. Maybe the sky above her island is a similar blue, or maybe it’s the blue of a newborn’s eyes. She will have to wait and see.

Simcoe pants on her neck and finishes his pathetic display, spilling on the naked, pale skin of her thigh. She does not look at it, just yanks her chemise down unceremoniously as he finally steps back, looking at her wide-eyed, like he expects something. _How weak they are,_ Anna thinks, _how predictable. He doesn’t even know what he’s done._ Or maybe he does, and he does not care. Yes, he is exactly that sort of man, she muses, with his smugness and his stature and his presumptions, his assumptions. He is gazing at her almost tenderly, studying the way her hair falls from its pins. She has a brief but vivid fantasy of using one of them to gouge out one of his eyes, but refuses to give him the satisfaction.

He tells her he looks forward to seeing her around town before he is called back for a new mission with the Queen’s Rangers. Anna says nothing. She looks down at her bare feet as he holsters his pistol (laid very obviously in open view on the table before he had stalked up to her earlier) in his freshly done-up breeches and leaves. She closes her eyes and imagines the colors made when water paints sand under sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know this isn't the place but my mind's on it: for some of the time while writing this i had the tv on for background noise, on this svu episode about this teenage boy who wasnt held responsible for raping a classmate because he "didnt really know what rape was" and it's like
> 
> i hate this world, ya feel me


	3. already ghosts

The next morning begins like any of the others she has had lately. Richard is stalking around the house, having read the very last book on the estate and bored out of his skull due to his inability to really do anything serviceable. Mary is watching over Thomas, cooing back and forth with him in the parlor as Hewlett pores over some of his notes. He looks like royalty, seated in Richard’s big red velvet armchair, and Anna immediately admonishes herself for the inappropriateness of the thought.

She slips out of the house much earlier than necessary and goes to the pub, and on her way she does not encounter Simcoe or any of his men. She has a brief flash of realization that perhaps traveling on her own, or being by herself at all, is not the safest course of action at this point, but who would she ask to escort her? And what more could he take from her? She has nothing left to give. Her life? _Ha,_ she thinks, hoping he hears her through some psychic fog that drifts over him, _they have already taken my life, and you had nothing to do with it._ She swallows it as some form of comeuppance, tells herself that he has little power over her.

But she finds herself breathless in the midst of her routine cleaning, suddenly overcome by panic. She grips the table she is in front of, trying to breathe through it, trying not to crumple to the floor. She shuts her eyes tight and only sees the curl at the corner of Simcoe’s mouth, so she opens them again and focuses on the wall ahead, a certain dark knot in the wood. She can still smell him, can still hear him, but she will _not_ see him, she will not, _I will not…_

The door swings open quietly enough that she takes no notice, but then a bright red coat is obstructing her view to the wall, and she refocuses her vision on Hewlett, standing there on the opposite side of the table she still holds. (She looks down at her knuckles - white with strain. She releases it, runs her hands down her dress as casually as she can and straightens her back.) “Major. What can I do for you?”

She had thought her acting fairly impressive, but she catches the way his face falls as she looks at him. “Mrs. Strong. Well, I had come just to see where you slipped off to, but I - I.” He pauses, and there are those kind eyes again, open and vulnerable and inviting. He takes a deep breath and tilts his head, studies her. “Is something wrong? That is - that is to say, is there anything I can assist with?”

Anna shakes her head, hard. “No, Major,” she says sharply. She offers nothing else.

Hewlett’s voice pitches soft. “I see now there was a reason you left so early this morning. I apologize for intruding, Anna, but I needed to make sure you were all right, you understand.”

Anna nods, standing her ground as he comes around the table to approach her. She will ignore this feeling, ignore and push it down until it goes away. No good has ever come to her from accepting help, and her friends would balk at the suggestion that she should take handouts of kindness from so prominent a representative of the enemy.

She does not need to think about her friends right now. She does not need to think about Abraham, as a child shivering with a mouth full of snow, mourning as a young man the tragic loss of his brother, confiding in her about withdrawing from school in the wake of his death at their secret meeting place, the place under that tree where they went when they needed respite from the stress that pressed in from all directions, traced each other’s palms and skipped rocks into the river and the world seemed to stop for them.

The memories are cut, now, tainted: flashes of John Simcoe’s villainous grin, the way his body heat surrounded her, his total disregard for her protests and utter ease, his manner. These thoughts are useless to her, but she cannot will them away. She collapses in the nearest chair, forgetting that she is being watched until Hewlett’s footsteps cover the rest of the space between them audibly, and she panics, tries to straighten up and face him but her eyes are wet and her lip is quivering and her hair has fallen out of its bun and she wants to escape, run, forever, but Hewlett is advancing on her and he, too, is larger than her, stronger, he would find it easy to overpower her in such a state -

He puts a hand to her shoulder, tentative. His fingertips are warm, and she feels the way his hand shakes slightly as he traces them down her upper arm. She revolts at his touch, wants to pull away, wants desperately to flee, but she is frozen in place. She can’t raise her face to look him in the eye - she focuses past him instead, staring numbly at some fuzzy horizon out the window.

Hewlett drags a chair closer and sits opposite her, anxiously gathering her small hands into one of his. He doesn’t fidget, just holds them, doing his best to stay still through the compulsion to shake violently, evident in his stiff posture, usually so natural, now so rehearsed.

They sit like that, and as time passes without more words exchanged, the silence grows more comfortable. Anna eventually does chance to look up at him, and his eyes widen further in pleading empathy, an invitation, but she simply meets his eyes and stays silent. She isn’t ready yet, though she feels she could be, given time - given enough of this, whatever it is they’re doing. This strange comfort in the center of her inn.

She hopes he doesn’t ask more of her.


	4. small and silver shining

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> we have a budding friendship. we have a budding plot.  
> we have more descriptions of assault/flashbacks.

Anna studies herself in the mirror, dark streaks under her eyes, her wenge hair brittler by the day. She searches for the youth under the breakage, the shine she knows was once in her skin. She thinks of wet springtime, dew on grass and fat, heavy drops of rain that splashed on her forehead when she met Abe at their place and kissed him boldly. The way his hands had felt in her hair…

Is gone, replaced with the way Simcoe’s sharp nails had scraped down her scalp. Abraham’s hesitant touches erased by purple bruises laid over the creamy places they had both laid their hands. Even the way Selah had ghosted the pads of his fingertips respectfully against her chest has faded away, the reverent weight of his large hands dwarfed by Simcoe’s.

She remembers, in violent flashes, the fight she had given him, at first, the shame when she realized she was too weak to win. The way that feeling doubled when she gave up, the well of her tears running dry and her chest seizing up with shock. She had wanted so badly to run, but found herself frozen in place - no, she argues with herself. Pinned. Held down against that wall, in the room she could never enter again, could only now pretend didn’t exist. A void in the upstairs stores of her pub; the last space she has left grows smaller and smaller. Her stomping grounds get invaded as she watches.

She never wants she and Abraham’s hiding place to be found. She thinks she could not deal with its invasion, thinks she would surely watch it razed and feel her heart collapse in on itself.

She sighs, buries her face in her hands, runs her hands up into her hairline and to the crown of her head, pulling her pincurls out by the force of splaying her fingers. It hurts, and she relishes it, tilting her head back and digging her nails into her own scalp. It feels familiar, somehow correct. She is so tired, she muses; eyes her bed but does not go to it. The hair fasteners topple to the wood surface of the vanity with the faintest clattering sounds.

Anna admits to herself that she romanticizes the war. She knows the men are not exactly enjoying themselves in the field, but finds it hard to believe that Caleb and Ben’s work is more difficult than her own, at this point. At least they have each other. Who does she have? Who have they left back in Setauket for company, now that Abe is so unavailable?

Ah. Of course.

*

She approaches Mary that evening, after she hears the bedroom doors of Richard and the major click shut. She finds her in her usual seat by the parlor fireplace, humming a made-up tune to herself as she embroiders a sampler with a patriotic design.

Anna doesn’t quite meet Mary’s eye as she brushes past her to take the seat across from the other woman, but she does upturn her lips in the smallest imitation of a smile, hoping it will disarm her. She does not want to deal with Mary’s stubborn resolve this evening; she is too tired.

“Mrs. Strong,” Mary says, but it carries a proposed familiarity on it, and more confusion than vitriol.

Anna nods, once, curt, as eager to skip ahead of the formalities as she is to ignore any ounce of Mary’s practiced decorum in general. “I was hoping we may… talk,” she says, less sure than she’d like.

Mary ignores her, asks her own questions. This is why she works for Abraham, Anna thinks; she pushes where others fall back. “How did you know to find me here?”

“We all need our own place of respite,” she answers, the corners of her mouth quirking up again. Mary smiles back and her body shakes a little with laughter, a knowing chuckle.

“What do you wish to speak to me about?” Her questions are direct as ever. Anna takes a deep breath, looks at her face, now. She is beautiful but tired. Anna sees so much in her that she knows Abraham does not; Abraham overlooks so many things. Men overlook so many things.

“I…” Anna has this all rehearsed. Why does she find her voice wavering? She does not stutter. She does not like the version of herself that stutters. “I come with a proposal. Your charity,” she straightens her dress, crosses her ankles the other way as she forces herself onward, _use this energy, feed off hers,_ she tells herself, “I think it a fine idea. And I had hoped the women in town could band together in - until our own men are returned to us - in more ways than one.” She finishes on the same breath she’d started with, breathes in deeply through her mouth to make up for it. She recognizes too late the urge to sniffle, the dryness in her throat. And Mary has her head tilted in concern. As Anna meets her eyes, she sees a flash of horror across the young woman’s face, and she hurries to her, grasps her hand in her own smaller, softer one.

“Oh, Anna, what did he do to you?” It figures that Mary would know. She leans down, presses a kiss against her forehead. The gesture is intimate, more comforting and gentle and overwhelming than anything Anna has ever felt. She cannot look up at Mary standing over her; she looks straight ahead, again focusing on a square inch of wall, grounding herself with a reminder that the room is not spinning.

Mary interrupts her gaze, kneeling down in front of her, her cream dress bunching under her on the ornate rug. “Do you need anything?” She asks, her voice even quieter than normal. There is power in that, Anna decides. Power in making people really listen to hear. Mary is full of power she wields expertly, genius she keeps hidden, which is a skill all its own. The fewer people privy to your usefulness, the less energy you expend on useless tasks. Anna has gone half a lifetime regretting showing off, regretting letting everyone know what she is good at, good for. Simcoe read it off her like a rulebook, a list. Mary reads her just as easily; she must wear it on her face, in the way she shakes with emotion.

Mary is perfectly still, and her expression betrays only what she wants it to.

_Use this energy. Feed off it._ Anna finds the strength to meet her companion’s gaze. Her friend’s gaze.

“You are so brilliant,” she tells Mary, a non-answer, not a statement meant to flatter. It doesn’t seem to hit as flattery. Mary just smiles briefly, tucks a wave of hair behind her ear then does the same for a loose lock of Anna’s own, strokes her cheek. The touch shakes Anna in her boots - again she is stricken by how gentle human contact can be. It seems she had completely forgotten.


End file.
